Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction

Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction
US – 1994
Director – Jim Wynorski
New Horizons Home Video, 1994, DVD
Run time - 1 hour 30 min.

When I rewatched Naked Cage several months ago to write about it, I took a shine to Shari Shattuck. I tracked down a couple of her other films including Tainted and this, only to discover that she never went beyond B-list TV and exploitation with a few saucy photos thrown in.

Forster's gettin' ready for another night in the ring.

This films thin plot-like gruel in which the tits will swim begins in a fancy hotel or brothel. A drunken Robert Forster beats-up two hookers and his buddy Alan is called in to diffuse the situation. The hooker abuse is quickly forgotten because Forster is under a lot of pressure man, and that's what dudes do. And hey, business calls, Alan has a hot lead on a great TV movie that he wants to pitch to Forster. Speaking of calling, Shari Shattuck is Claire, a TV sex-psychologist with a live video-call-in show. Her recently deceased lovers are the subject of Alan’s script

Alan’s source is an old buddy and alcoholic radio personality cum-script writer. He claims that his story is great but the idea has to be okayed by Claire herself, and that just might take some doing. After getting an eyeful of Claire, Alan is prepared to do some doing, but she is appalled by the idea of a TV bio-pic, unless she has total control over the whole process. To this end she later calls on Alan in his hotel room where she proposes a special deal in which he provides, the “doing” and she will let him make the movie, with the aforementioned stipulations.

What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of my wife's makeup.

Things get stupidly complicated as Alan’s actress wife, Morgan Fairchild -basically playing herself- gets the notion that she should play Claire in the movie. The writer meanwhile does some investigation and finds out that Claire’s priors include extreme S&M that caused her lovers deaths. The mystery here is apparently supposed to be who Claire’s lovers were and why. Ostensibly she had some ulterior motive for fucking them to death, but this seems pointless to the overall plot and added after the fact to add screen time between Shari’s disrobings. To keep the writer from revealing her motives to Alan, she repeatedly uses her vaginal mind control device to reduce Alan to a speechless idiot with a stiffy. Despite this, each time he’s being “coerced” by Claire (or his wife), he wears a look of uncomfortable revulsion on his taut and pallid visage.

Whatever. The overarching theme is that Claire is downright predatory which seems pointless because she doesn’t have to be, she is an attractive and successful doctor, author and TV personality after all. Rather, the real point is that sexually aggressive/confident women are so intimidating that there has to be some evil intent working behind the scenes, right? Men aren’t just so stupid that they’ll do anything for poontang are they? Absolutely not, from the evidence presented it’s clear, any woman who likes sex is obviously trying to bring about the downfall of modern civilization.

The Delta Force

Nice cut-n'-paste job on Lee Marvin's head

The Delta Force

United States – 1986

Director – Menahem Golan

MGM Home Entertainment, 1998, VHS

Run time – 2 hours, 8 min.

Director Menahem Golan: one-half of the defunct Israeli power production duo Golan-Globus, owners of the belly-up Cannon Pictures Group and purveyors of slash and burn 80’s action cinema. From the meat-cleaver-to-the-face political subtlety in this and some other films directed by Golan, one might go so far as to consider him a gung-ho Arab-villifying Jewsploitation predecessor to Steven Spielberg.

Really, The Delta Force is two movies, who like reluctant lovers, slowly test the waters, coyly wooing each other until finally they mate in a cacophony of exploding grenades and video game music.

The first "movie" is a shock to behold, and really deserves custody of the offspring of this unholy and awkward union. Robert Forster (Vigilante, Alligator) plays Abdul, leader of a cell of Lebanese terrorists who hijack a plane departing Athens (based on the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847). Forster has the role pegged down to a science: he made my skin crawl pistol-whipping whimpering American-Pig-Dog capitalist passengers with the sickening and deeply satisfying wet crack of vindication. (also look for staple B-actors Martin Balsam, George Kennedy and "stone free" Bo Svenson on this flight)

Meanwhile, in doo-poop land, a general, encrusted with so many ribbons he needs to be taken into dry dock and scraped, orders up the magical Delta Force in one of those "Oooooo, WOW!" moments I think you're supposed to get awed and wide-eyed about – if you're 8. Led by the withered husk of Lee Marvin (his last screen appearance before he died a year later), the dopey ass-slapping extras playing Delta Force (including Chuck’s son Eric) wait on board their code named secret aircraft "Delta 1". Just as they’re about to depart, whew, retired DF Captain Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) shows up to join the boy-scouts, and the sausage fest is airborne for a field trip in Beirut.

The coming conflict is glaringly predictable, and few of the details need to be fleshed out. Forster continues to dominate this picture, and the cuts from hijacking scenes to thinly-veiled patriotic cock-stroking, become less and less jarring, if only because the two forces - evil, brilliant Forster, and righteous, pallid Norris (and crew) - overlap with more and more screen time. Finally, with all the hot flying lead and NES music we’ve been dipping our feet into, it comes crashing down in a deluge of predictable mediocrity, until we slip all the way into the pot to have the flesh boiled from our bones. His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Norris’s piercing “American justice” glare is at head-exploding intensity here, and strikes fear in the hearts of all. Best of all, he gets to ride a dirt-bike with automatically reloading missles and machine guns on the front and grenade launchers on the back. I think the grenades are a metaphor for a deluge of fecal spray; they shoot out of the "exhaust pipe", and in any case I am sure that unlike real grenades, these ones are super grenades that explode instantly on target, all the time.

Now, with a conveniently placed ramp, Norris can dramatically leap and wheelie his way into the sunset, coating everything in his path with a fine spray of human waste; talented supporting actors unlucky enough to be caught in his shadow, and my poor weeping eyes, included.

Poster art from Film Cynic.

Soundtrack cover art from Ruthless Reviews.